The ladies, now let’s get in formation, I slay,”

The video I chose to analyze is
“Formation” by Beyoncé. The video begins with a guy narrator saying, “What
happened to the New Orleans” and then proceeding to show houses under water,
police and their flashing lights, and Beyoncé sitting on top of cop car that is
submerged under water. These are events that are similar to the occurrences that
happened in New Orleans but were forgotten. Beyoncé is telling people to not
forget, that we need to remember events like those and make a change. During
this video, the timeline was a little all over the place. It kept on switching
between the past and present. Most of the people in the video were colored, the
only people who weren’t, were the white cops. In this video Beyoncé is trying
to project the message that black lives matter and promote women empowerment.

Beyoncé is trying to get across
that one should be proud of their ethnicity and how they were born looking. At
0:45 Beyoncé sings, “I like my baby heir with baby hair and afros,” she
proceeds to show a clip of her kid, with her natural hair seeming happy. Then
at 2:40, in the chorus, she sings, “Okay, ladies, now let’s get in formation, I
slay,” at this point she’s telling all the women to unite and to stand up and
be proud of who they are. If women work together and not fight each other we
can make a change. Towards the end, at 3:30, when she says, “I dream it, I work
hard, I grind till I own it” the video shows a newspaper article featuring
Martin Luther King with the title of “More Than A Dreamer.” Beyoncé uses MLK to
show that there can be changes, without violence, just like in the past. While listening to the
music video I heard the word “bama” multiple times and was confused as to what
this word meant. According to Popsugar.com, “bama” is a racist term used to
describe blacks arriving North from the South during the Great Immigration. It
meant someone who didn’t know how to behave “properly” and wasn’t presentable
for whites. Beyoncé using it in her song shows that she is proud of who she is
and how her colored audience should be proud of who they are and how they were
raised.

We Will Write a Custom Essay SpecificallyFor You For Only $13.90/page!